In Memoriam

Last Friday morning, eight high school students and two teachers lost their lives in Santa Fe, Texas, the sixth fatal school shooting of 2018. That same night, a woman was killed on the campus of Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Georgia.

The students leave behind empty desks and diplomas. They all leave futures and families and friends, a painful collection of what-ifs. Each of their stories is unique, yet they each converge on a painful truth: They died at one of our schools. 

We said, “Never again.” But again is now. Today, we add the names of the most recent victims to our list of those we’ve lost in school shootings since Columbine. This list serves to keep our collective memory of these victims alive, but it also reminds us of the terrible human cost of gun violence; the terrible cost of insufficient support for troubled young people; and the terrible cost of our national complacency.